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Millions Working to Solve Local Problems

NCoC and the Corporation for National and Community Service Produce First Civic Health Assessment

September 16, 2010

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“The most powerful force in American democracy is the connection between and among citizens,” said David B. Smith, NCoC’s Executive Director.

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A Civic Nation: Executive Summary of America’s First Civic Health AssessmentSeptember 16, 2010

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The National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC), founded in 1946 and chartered by Congress in 1953, is charged with the mission of advancing our nation's civic life. In accordance with this mission, NCoC has produced America's Civic Health Index for the last four years to measure the level of civic engagement and health of our nation's democracy. As a result of the passage of the bipartisan Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, this work is expanding through an annual Civic Health Assessment. The Civic Health Assessment measures America's civic habits across a wide range of indicators in an effort to strengthen citizen participation in their communities, states, and nation.

Here, NCoC presents its executive summary of the leading findings from the 2010 Civic Health Assessment, based on research conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2008 and 2009. This document supplements an issue brief jointly released with the Corporation for National and Community Service. The joint brief is titled ''Civic Life in America: Key Findings on the Civic Health of the Nation.''

Key Findings include:

In tough times, Americans are solving problems in their own communities.
The Internet is helping to advance civic participation in America.
Creating community impact doesn't happen in a vacuum–it's part of a reinforcing cycle. People who are involved in one area of community activity are more likely to be involved in others.
Demographics indicate that veterans are generally more involved in their communities and more likely to engage in most types of political behavior than non-veterans.

The NCoC Executive Summary, as well as the jointly-produced Issue Brief are available for download at http://NCoC.net/CivicHealth2010. For more on the data, and rankings of 50 states and 51 largest communities, visit Civic.Serve.gov

In order to localize this data, NCoC is working in partnership with 13 states and 4 cities to produce localized Civic Health Index reports. These publications will be released throughout the fall 2010.

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3 Comments in this Thread

2 Replies

By Steven Clift at 11:30 AM on Sep 16th, 2010

I am particularly interested in hearing from others about their efforts to promote citizen engagement and neighbor to neighbor connections online.

Let's share! The lessons are out there, but not well documented or known in even the neighborhood next door.

You said that the Internet "appears" to build civic health and our experience is that is _definitely_ does ... but only with democratic intent. Technology is not neutral - note the poor quality of local online news commenting compared to exchanges with friends who also live in your community on Facebook where you use real names.

In my neighborhood I host an online neighbors forum - http://e-democracy.org/se - that reaches almost 15% of households daily. We mix "community life" and public participation (today people are trying figure out what this bug is in someone's basement, the other week it was a discussion about the park board and whether they properly engaged neighbors about a decision).

Soon we will have 18 of these across the Twin Cities - http://e-democracy.org/nf - and with Ford Foundation support we've been working - http://e-democracy.org/inclusion - to show that lower income, high immigrant communities can and should have a digital neighbor to neighbor voice just like typically white, wealthier areas do. Note the recent Pew Internet "Neighbors Online" study: http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/858

This what "democratic intent" is all about.

Finally some places to connect if this interests you:

Locals Online - For "hosts" of local online blogs, social nets, e-lists: http://e-democracy.org/locals

Using Technology to Build Community Webinar:
http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/845

Inclusive Social Media Initiative:
http://e-democracy.org/inclusion
Also note: http://blog.e-democracy.org
http://www.facebook.com/edemocracyorg

CityCamp Exchange - Local Gov 2.0 meets Citizens 2.0 - unconference series: http://e-democracy.org/citycamp - Main home: http://citycamp.com

Democracies Online Exchange - International online group since 1998: http://dowire.org/x Or: http://www.facebook.com/dowire

Sunshine 2.0 - Drafting metrics to evaluate local government online support for democracy commissioned by national League of Women Voters - might offer value to a similar effort looking at the local online civic health of a community as a whole: http://e-democracy.org/sunshine

Neighborly - We are exploring an open source approach to neighbor to neighbor networking online via electronic block clubs - http://e-democracy.org/neighborly

Local Social Media Links - Many players in this space:
http://pages.e-democracy.org/Social_media_in_local_public_life

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